Antonella Baccaro (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
H.or got into the habit, during long lonely car journeys, which the pandemic forced me to do, of having an audiobook accompany me. It was love at first sight.
It is now so rare to find new pleasures, capable of producing small happinesses, that I want to share this discovery with you.
Traveling by car alone, in itself, is a dive into oneself. In the most absolute silence, but also with the background of the music, it is inevitable to fall into deeper thoughts than usual.
The fact is that these thoughts often vanish: it is as if they are passing at the same speed as the car. With a book it’s different: the flow is continuous.
The feeling of alienation produced by a cleverly told story is powerful. AND I was reminded of the hypnotic power of fairy tales that I had forgotten, or rather, about which I had never elaborated an adult and conscious thought.
Book after book, I went on to expand the pleasure of listening by making it preceded by that of choosing the text. Avid readers know this: choosing a book is a mystical experience.
The silence that surrounds bookstores and libraries is not accidental, and neither is it silence. It is the rustle of our hearts in search of a story to fall in love with, a story to give in without defense.
So, before leaving, I start looking for the book that will accompany me: not too long compared to the trip and certainly not shorter. I started with the yellow, the noir, thinking that a plot with a predetermined development favored my concentration.
Then I realized that I can also trust good storytellers who take you for a walk without a predefined destination. The last book I listened to was a bit of a challenge: Three floors by Eshkol Nevo, from which Nanni Moretti made a film that hadn’t completely taken me.
The book, wonderfully read by three good actors, it kidnapped me to the point that, not having finished it during the trip, I continued to listen to it as I went back into the house, unpacking, and then crouching on the sofa until evening fell. But we will talk about the magic of this book another time.
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